Cuiabá

Above: Guaraná berries.

Wednesday 1st June 1988

I was glad when dawn broke and the temperature increased to a comfortable level. We pulled into the Rodoviária de Cuiabá at 07:00 hrs. and I took Bus 202 to the centre of town to look for a hotel. The first one was full and the second one didn’t appear to exist anymore, but I eventually took a really nice single room in the Hotel Samara at Rua Joaquim Murtinho 150 for 600 Cruzados.

I was beginning to look a bit scruffy, so I washed some clothes, had a shave, a haircut and good meal to restore my humanity. I went to the centrepiece of Cuiabá which is a small green square called Praça de República. The modern but very stylish basilica, the Cathedral Basilica Bom Jesus de Cuiabá, fronts this square, as does the tourist information office and the small natural history museum.

The staff in Tourist Information Office were friendly and gave me a photocopied map but were unable to recommend any attractions to visit in the city. I walked around the pleasant, modern town, browsing along the pedestrian shopping lanes and looking at unspectacular churches.

I went back for a siesta in the afternoon and in the evening I went for a walk-about finishing up in a supermarket where I bought a few snack things including yoghurt with honey, which was yummy. Tourists seemed to be a novelty in Cuiabá and I attracted quite a few stares. Most of the locals were dark skinned so I stood out.

Back in my room I spent a relaxing evening making a list of all my kit (I know how to live!), having a long hot shower and listening to the radio. Vodka and guaraná juice, which the ants were partial to, helped me to have a good night’s sleep when I went to bed early to catch up after a night spent on the coach.

The word guaraná comes from the Guaraní word guara-ná, which has its origins in the Sateré-Maué word for the plant, warana, that in Guarani means "fruit like the eyes of the people" or "eyes of the gods”.

sertão

Tuesday 31st May 1988

I took the 700 Bus which raced through the grassy void surrounding Brasília at breakneck speed, lurching violently as we took the sweeping bends, threatening to roll over! At the Rodoviária de Brasília I found a small Post Office and rattled off a postcard to my friend Martin McCormack before having an eggburger while waiting for the bus to Cuiabá.

We left at noon and sped along a seemingly endless black ribbon of road through the extensive sertão. A sertão is the "hinterland" or "backcountry". In Brazil, it refers to one of the four sub-regions of the Northeast Region of Brazil (similar to the specific association of "outback" with Australia in English).

Northeast Brazil is largely covered in a scrubby upland forest called a caatingas. Its borders are not precise. It is an economically poor region that is well-known in Brazilian culture, with a rich history and much folklore, something like the American South.

Because the sertão lies just south of the equator, temperatures are nearly uniform throughout the year and are typically tropical, often extremely hot in the west. I was under the illusion that it was always hot in the interior of Brazil, and so apparently were a lot of the other passengers who were dressed, like me, in T-shirts or summer short-sleeved shirts.

The night was cold with patches of fog and rain although in theory the sertão is distinctive in its low rainfall compared to other areas of Brazil. Because of the relatively cool temperatures in the South Atlantic Ocean, the intertropical convergence zone remains north of the region for most of the year, so that most of the year is very dry.

We passed rolling hills, grass, woolly trees, deep red earth and isolated farms. I curled up into a ball and dozed on and off as we travelled through the night.

Brasilia

Monday 30th May 1988

I arrived early in Brasília at the Rodoferroviária which was initially planned in 1956 as a state-of-the-art railway station on the Brasília extension of the Goiás Railroad, in place of the former Vera Cruz Airport in Brasilia. It was inaugurated in 1976 as a station, but due to the low use by passengers, it was reopened in 1981 and was also an interstate Bus Station, and is called Rodoferroviária de Brasília.

Brasília is the federal capital of Brazil and seat of government of the Federal District. The city is located atop the Brazilian highlands in the country's centre-western region. It was founded on April 21, 1960, to serve as the new national capital.

The Tourist Information Office was useless, but I found out that I needed to get a bus to the Rodoviária in the centre for 45 Cruzados. Central hotels were expensive at more than 2,200 Cruzados for a room, so I took Bus 700 to the nearby suburb of Taguatinga for 55 Cruzados.

By around 1749, near the Córrego Cortado, appeared a small settlement, formed by pioneers and drovers who sought to establish allotments in the Captaincy of Goiás, this was the first landing of the white man in the land of the future city of Taguatinga previously occupied by indigenous macro-Ge linguistic branch, as acroás, the xacriabás, the xavantes, the kayapos, the javaés, etc. However, some of these adventurers settled, excited by the possibility of gold and diamonds, near the Cut.

To contain the constant invasions on land near the new capital, the city Taguatinga was created on June 5, 1958, on land which previously belonged to the Farm Taguatinga. Initially, the city was called "Villa Sarah Kubitschek" but then its name was changed to "Santa Cruz de Taguatinga", leaving only "Taguatinga". Often it is called by locals simply "Taguá".

The consolidation of the city took place much later, almost two centuries after this period, mainly generated by large populations attracted by the construction of Brasília. It was the beginning of settlement then the first satellite city of Brasília.

In Taguatinga I got a room in the Hotel Globo for 500 Cruzados as the recommended Hotel São Paulo was closed. At the hotel I met a Brazilian who was now an Australian citizen from Perth. He explained that the reason that all of the shops were closed, and the city was so dead was because it was a Bank Holiday for Memorial Day. Super!

I needed to change up some travellers cheques so he suggested that I try the Hotel Nacional, the most luxurious hotel in the centre, for cambio (money exchange). I took the bus back to the Eixo (the centre).

The city of Brasília was designed in the shape of an aeroplane (or a drawn bow and arrow, or “like a bird flying eternally free”!). The Rodoviária was at the centre where the residential wings join the body. All of the government ministries and parliamentary functions are in the nose area and the Rodoferroviária is at the tail.

The city is located at the top of the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West region. It was founded by President Juscelino Kubitschek on 21 April 1960, to serve as the new national capital. Brasília is estimated to be Brazil's third-most populous city. Among major Latin American cities, it has the highest GDP per capita.

Brasília was a planned city developed by Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer and Joaquim Cardozo in 1956 in a scheme to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro to a more central location. The landscape architect was Roberto Burle Marx.

The city's design divides it into numbered blocks as well as sectors for specified activities, such as the Hotel Sector, the Banking Sector, and the Embassy Sector. Brasília was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 due to its modernist architecture and uniquely artistic urban planning.

At the exclusive Hotel Nacional, I changed $100 US dollars at the mediocre rate of 200 Cruzados to the $US dollar and was informed that there was a City Tour leaving at 14:00 hrs. at a cost of 1,600 Cruzados. This was a good idea because the city boasts that it is only 40% buildings and 60% open space, so everything is separated by a vast area of red earth gamely trying to support grass and dotted with hardy trees.

Before the tour started I had time to go to the Rodoferroviária de Brasília to get a ticket to Cuiabá for tomorrow at noon for 2,960 Cruzados. Cuiabá is the capital city of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. It serves as the Geographical Centre of South America and forms the metropolitan area of the state, along with the neighbouring town of Várzea Grande. The city was founded in 1719, during the gold rush, it has been the state capital since 1818.

We drove through the sterile commercial, banking and residential sectors in a half-empty tourist coach. Most of the workers had gone elsewhere for the Bank Holiday weekend so it was pretty much deserted.

Our first stop was at a small mediocre chapel with a modern design which boasted to be the first building to be inaugurated in Brasília. The next stop was at The Santuário Dom Bosco or St. Dom Bosco’s Sanctuary, the only building that I really liked in the capital city. It was built in 1963 and from the outside it looked like a dull blockhouse.

However, inside it was fantastic. Santuário Dom Bosco is made of 80 concrete columns that support 7400 pieces of illuminated Murano glass, symbolizing a starry sky, which cast a blue submarine glow over the pews. The central chandelier weighs 2.5 tons and adds an amazing 435 light bulbs’ worth of energy to the monthly electricity bill. It was designed by the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer.

All the walls were made up of panels of sky blue through to black glass with clear dots of unstained glass to represent stars. A pink panel of glass at each corner admitted sufficient daylight to keep the church sufficiently light. A huge crucifix of wood dominated the stage. In the interior of the sanctuary the blue hued light made you feel like you were in a huge fish tank or aquarium.

The coach drove on down passed the skeletal TV tower and the sports section with the Estádio Nacional de Brasília Mané Garrincha, also known as Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha, Estádio Nacional de Brasília, Arena Mané Garrincha or simply Mané Garrincha, which is a football stadium and multipurpose arena.

We arrived at the headquarters of the Brazilian Army Headquarters where the huge, echoing entrance portal was made in the form of a cutlass handguard. We saw the tomb and memorial museum of President Juscelino Kubitschek, the father of Brasília, in a white, cut-off pyramid along the central Eixo Monumental near the tip of the arrow.

Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira (12th September 1902 to 22nd August 1976), known also by his initials JK, was a prominent Brazilian politician who served as the 21st president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961. His term was marked by economic prosperity and political stability, being most known for the construction of a new capital, Brasília.

We went on to see a lot of the buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer, including the cathedral which represents a crown of thorns, the various ministries and government buildings around the “Three Powers Square” and the Presidential Palace. The Catedral Metropolitana de Brasília is a hyperboloid structure constructed from 16 concrete columns, weighing 90 tons each.

The Palácio da Alvorada is the President of Brazil’s official residence since the inauguration of Juscelino Kubitschek. The Palace is situated on a peninsula that overlooks the Paranoa lake.

The Three Powers Square, or Praça dos Três Poderes in Portuguese, is named after its surroundings being the three governmental powers of Brazil: the Executive, represented by the presidential office (Palácio do Planalto); the Legislative, represented by the National Congress (Congresso Nacional); and the Judiciary, represented by the Federal Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal).

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15th December 1907 to 5th December 2012), known as Oscar Niemeyer was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture.

Niemeyer was best known for his design of civic buildings for Brasília, a planned city that became Brazil's capital in 1960, as well as his collaboration with other architects on the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. His exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of reinforced concrete was highly influential in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

I found none of these buildings overly impressive and the whole city had a sterile, futuristic “1984” feel about it. People lived in blocks in sectors. There were no road names, only numbers and letters, so the address of my hotel was CNB4 Lote 1.

I took a bus back to Taguatinga and had a huge chicken risotto in a Chinese Restaurant near the hotel before going to bed early at 19:00 hrs. I had to wage war on the resident mosquitos before retiring, and once again when I awoke at 02:00 hrs. to their infuriating humming.

Belo Horizonte

Sunday 29th May 1988

Breakfast was a noisy affair with the excited school kids. Afterwards we walked up to the Praça Tiradentes where we found everything closed except for the tourist shops. I tried in vain to change a travellers cheque and ended up having to change $20 US dollars cash.

We walked to the Rodoviária de Ouro Preto in time to catch the 11:30 hrs. bus, killing the last fifteen minutes with a walk around the nearby church. A tour guide was explaining that the reason that there were so many churches in Ouro Preto was that there were a lot of very rich people there during the gold rush and they bought “tickets to Heaven” by investing in churches. “Did they get there”? asked one of the party, causing much laughter.

Above: Praça Tiradentes in Ouro Preto.

We talked to an English-speaking Brasilian girl on the one-and-a-half-hour bus trip to Belo Horizonte. She was anxious to move to Europe, disillusioned by Brazilian politics. Belo Horizonte ('Beautiful Horizon') is the first planned modern city in Brazil.

The region was first settled in the early 18th century, but the city as it is known today was planned and constructed in the 1890s, to replace Ouro Preto as the capital of Minas Gerais. The city features a mixture of contemporary and classical buildings, and is home to several modern Brazilian architectural icons, most notably the Pampulha Complex.

In planning the city, Aarão Reis and Francisco Bicalho sought inspiration in the urban planning of Washington, D.C. The city has employed notable programs in urban revitalization and food security, for which it has been awarded international accolades.

The city is built on several hills and is completely surrounded by mountains and there are several large parks in the immediate surroundings of Belo Horizonte. We arrived and went for a walk into the city.

We walked up the main drag, Avenida Afonso Pena, from the Rodoviária. Towering new office blocks and multistorey banks flanked the road. We turned off at the Municipal Park and walked down Avenida João Pinheiro to the Praça da Liberdade where they were just dismantling the Sunday market. Cleaners attacked the mountains of litter left behind.

On our way back we looked at the exhibition lithography (printing) and cartography in the Mineiro Museum and then went into the Parque Municipal which is billed as one of Beagá's most appealing spots, this enormous sea of tropical greenery with artificial lakes and winding pathways is just 10 minutes southeast of the bus station. It's especially fun on Sunday when everyone's out strolling and socializing.

Here we did indeed find crowds of people out for some Sunday afternoon diversion. There was a funfair where we watched small children concentrating intensely as they tried to master the controls of the bumper cars.

Other people were on the boating lakes, donkey rides, promenades and the children’s playground where heavily muscled black men did pull-ups amongst the excited kids at play. Girls walked around dressed in their best clothes and boys with portable radios blaring tried to chat them up.

Back at the Rodoviária we ate cheese sandwiches and drank beer until my bus to Brasília departed at 19:00 hrs. I waved goodbye to Uli who still had two hours to wait for his bus. It was dark and I was tired, so I saw little of the passing terrain. What I did see appeared to be a monotonous vista of low trees, grassy plains and red earth.

Mariana

Saturday 28th May 1988

I joined Tom and Uli for breakfast at 08:00 hrs. The dining area was noisily occupied by a party of 15-year-old school children from Rio de Janeiro on a history trip.

After breakfast we went for a walk around the west of the town where there were yet more churches, plazas, orange tiled roofs and colourful houses on steep cobbled lanes.

It reminded me of Gold Hill, a steep cobblestone hill in the market town of Shaftesbury in Dorset that has a picture-perfect view of the countryside, and the 1973 Hovis bread advert.

The Hovis advert is called ‘Boy on a Bike’ and features a boy pushing his bike up Gold Hill for a bread delivery. After he delivers the bread, he freewheels back down the cobblestones to Dvorak’s New World Symphony! Although the advert was made some time ago, it’s continually voted as one of Britain’s favourite TV adverts of all time. Old people seemed accustomed to trudging up the steep hills with their shopping bags.

At 11:00 hrs. Uli and I walked to the Rodoviária de Ouro Preto with Tom who was moving on. The Rodoviária Bus Terminal was skilfully camouflaged underground, below well-kept lawns so as not to spoil the traditional old look of the town.

There were no direct buses to Brasília, so I bought a ticket to Belo Horizonte for 305 Cruzados for tomorrow. We said “goodbye” to Tom and caught the local bus to Mariana. Mariana is the oldest city in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It is a tourist city, founded on July 16, 1696, and retains the characteristics of a baroque city, with its churches, buildings and museums. It was the first capital of Minas Gerais.

We arrived at a small town with central twin churches and more outlying churches. There were old colonial buildings much like Ouro Preto, but there were a lot of new ones as well. The streets from the twin churches to the central plaza had been decorated with coloured wood shavings to make patterns and crests. The houses along the route were hung with yellow garlands.

We had a beer in the town square and watched the preparations which were being made to welcome a new bishop to the town. During the afternoon church dignitaries from all over the area arrived, a wealth of Archbishops and priests.

People gathered excitedly around the twin baroque churches wearing their best clothes. There were children dressed as angels and others with placards welcoming the new clergyman Dom Luciano. The church bells rang, confetti rained down and cameras clicked as the archbishops arrived.

The top dogs seemed to wear black or red instead of the common white. After a short ceremony in the church to group moved down the decorated streets to the main square where there was a stage setup outside the cathedral with a crucifix and banks of loudspeakers.

The Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Assumption (Portuguese: Catedral Metropolitana Basílica Nossa Senhora da Assunção) also called Caxias do Sul Cathedral It is a Catholic cathedral-basilica, the seat of the Archdiocese of Mariana.

A group of pointed bishops’ hats could be seen amongst the throng. Uli and I watched as they all went in for mass and then we caught the bus back to Ouro Preto. Here we had a pizza in the Praça Tiradentes and then went back to the guest house where we saw the Mariana religious festivities on the news on television.

I wrote my diary and then went out into the town, leaving Uli to sleep. In the town centre a crowd had gathered to watch a demonstration of Capoeira. Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, and music. It was developed by enslaved Africans in Brazil at the beginning of the 16th century. It is known for its acrobatic and complex manoeuvres, often involving hands on the ground and inverted kicks.

Rhythmic tribal music was provided by drum, tambourine and berimbau, a single-string percussion instrument which looked like a decorated bow and arrow. Dancers (contestants?) went through fast non-contact Kung Fu motions with whirling kicks, blows and acrobatics.

I went to have a beer in a popular student bar before the film that I wanted to see at the cinema started at 22:30 hrs. There were students everywhere giving the town a festive atmosphere. I saw “Room with a View”, a 1985 British romance film directed by James Ivory with a screenplay written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and produced by Ismail Merchant, of E. M. Forster's novel of the same name (1908).

In 1907, a young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter), and her spinster cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith), stay at the Pensione Bertolini while on holiday in Florence. They are disappointed their rooms lack a view of the Arno as promised.

Set in England and Italy, it is about a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch in the final throes of the restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian England, and her developing love for a free-spirited young man, George Emerson. The film closely follows the novel by use of chapter titles to distinguish thematic segments.

The town was still busy with drinkers, loiterers and lovers when I walked back to the Pousada Ciclo de Ouro where I was staying.

Ouro Preto

Friday 27th May 1988

We arrived at Ouro Preto just after the grey dawn. A man outside the Rodoviário Bus Terminal had handed me a card for the Pousada Ciclo de Ouro at Felipe dos Santos 241. This cost 700 Cruzados for Bed and Breakfast.

The historic colonial town was scattered about the steep green hills below the Ouro Preto Bus Terminal. Distinctive curved tiled roofs, steep slippery rain-slick cobbled streets and more churches than you could shake a stick at!

I had breakfast at the pleasant friendly guest house where I met Uli from Berlin and Tom from Holland. After breakfast we went out to see the town. It was like something out of a time machine, apart from the modern cars.

Founded at the end of the 17th century, Ouro Preto (meaning Black Gold) was originally called Vila Rica, or "Rich Town", the focal point of the gold rush and Brazil's golden age in the 18th century under Portuguese rule. Between 1695 and 1696, a gold-bearing stream was discovered in Itacolomi, which would be renamed Gualacho do Sul.

In 1711, several small settlements were united as a municipality called Villa Rica, which later came to be called Ouro Preto. This name was adopted on 20th May 1823, when the former Vila Rica was elevated from village to city. "Black Gold" comes from the gold covered with a layer of iron oxide that is found in the city.

The city centre contains well-preserved Portuguese colonial architecture, with few signs of modern urban development. New construction must keep with the city's historical aesthetic. 18th- and 19th-century churches decorated with gold and the sculptured works of Aleijadinho make Ouro Preto a tourist destination.

The tremendous wealth from gold mining in the 18th century created a city which attracted the intelligentsia of Europe. Philosophy and art flourished, and evidence of a baroque revival called the "Barroco Mineiro" is illustrated in architecture as well as by sculptors such as Aleijadinho, painters such as Mestre Athayde, composers such as Lobo de Mesquita, and poets such as Tomás António Gonzaga. At that time, Vila Rica was the largest city in Brazil, with 100,000 inhabitants.

Rich people believed that by building a church it would give them guaranteed entry to heaven. We went to one of these ornate churches with a museum containing paraphernalia such as chalices in gold and silver, paintings and sculptures of saints being pious. There were gory crucifixion works, souls in torment pictures and all the usual Catholic religious gubbins.

We walked up to a solid church on a high point overlooking the whole town where a couple of kids flew kites. We walked back to the central Praça Tiradentes (The place where the head of the martyr of independence, Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, tiradentes was exposed (1792) in Vila Rica, present-day Ouro Preto.), wading through the gemstone touts and caught a bus to the Minas da Passagem.

Halfway between Ouro Preto and Mariana, this ancient gold mine was founded by the Portuguese in 1719 and definitively decommissioned in 1985. Here we paid an excessive 500 Cruzados for a run into the abandoned mineshaft on the miners train.

Google research reveals that The Passage Mine is one of the largest mines still existing for visitation in the world, located in the Brazilian municipality of Mariana, in the Quadrilátero Ferrífero area, in the state of Minas Gerais. Located in the district of Passagem de Mariana and about 7,200 km² long, the mine of the passage is the largest mine in this region with its 30 km of tunnels, with underground lakes of crystal-clear waters.

In 1729, the first mine deposits were discovered, which only began to be explored more than 100 years later. During the gold cycle in Minas Gerais by the Portuguese and English who even extracted 35 tons of gold. The mine was shut down in 1954 but was reopened for visitation in the 1970s. Nowadays the mine is used for tourism, it is one of the largest meeting points for cave divers in Brazil.

We saw rusting machinery, a shrine to the miner’s patron saint, St Procopius, and a blue subterranean lake of copper sulphate solution. Apparently, the gold miners had a dicey job risking silicosis and arsenic poisoning.

We returned to town and visited the mineral museum where we saw beautifully coloured gems and minerals. Apparently, it was one of the largest collections of rocks and minerals in the world, including diamonds, uranium, topaz, quartz, agates and much more. It is housed inside the School of Mines.

We then visited a rather ornate church, partly to stay out of the rain. I bought birthday cards for my sister Katy Subanney and my dad, Harry Hawkins, and wrote them over a coffee in a café by the Post Office.

Back at the hotel I had a long overdue shower and joined Uli and Tom to see “Superman IV” at the town cinema. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is a 1987 superhero film directed by Sidney J. Furie and written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal from a story by Christopher Reeve, Konner, and Rosenthal based on the DC Comics character Superman.

The film stars Reeve, Gene Hackman, Jackie Cooper, Marc McClure, Jon Cryer, Sam Wanamaker, Jim Broadbent, Mariel Hemingway, and Margot Kidder. It was the fifth film in the Superman film series and a sequel to Superman III (1983). It was also the final appearance of Christopher Reeve as Superman.

We had a good evening meal in the cellar restaurant on the steeply sloping Rua Conde Bobadela and left the establishment too early, missing the live music as we were all too tired. The town was livening up with a wealth of young students out on the streets.

I went to bed and fell asleep immediately despite the noise of revelry outside.

Pão de Açúcar

Thursday 26th May 1988

Another miserable day but I was determined to get some photographs of Rio de Janeiro regardless of the weather. I took the bus in the drizzle to the border of Leblon and Ipanema so that I could get photos of Ipanema Beach and the Lord Jim Pub.

The beach was deserted, and the palm trees swayed in the wind. A few joggers splashed along through the shallow puddles on the promenade. I continued along Copacabana Beach which looked bleak under the low grey cloud, a far cry from the lively crowded beach full of glamourous people that it was on Sunday.

I took the 511 bus, when I eventually got one to stop, from the Avenida N. S. Copacabana to the Sugar Loaf Mountain or Pão de Açúcar. Outside the cable car station a few miserable looking stall holders crouched under polythene sheets which protected their souvenir T-shirts and knick-knacks from the rain.

The Sugarloaf Cable Car (Portuguese: Bondinho do Pão de Açúcar) is a cableway system. The first part runs between Praia Vermelha and Morro da Urca (at 722 feet (220 metres)), from where the second rises to the summit of the 1,299-foot (396 metres) Sugarloaf Mountain.

The cableway was envisioned by the engineer Augusto Ferreira Ramos in 1908 who sought support from well-known figures of Rio's high society to promote its construction. Opened in 1912, it was only the third cableway to be built in the world. In 1972 the cars were updated, growing from a capacity of 22 to 75, and in 1979 it featured in an action scene for the James Bond film Moonraker.

I paid 540 Cruzados for a return ticket to top of the Sugar Loaf. This was a two-stage trip, and at the first stop there was a good view of central Rio and the yachts mooring in the bay, but it was gloomy and drizzling with rain.

There were only four other sightseers. Two elderly women and a couple of young lovers who stared into each other’s eyes on the balcony, oblivious to the weather and the view. As the cable car ascended to the ultimate summit station we passed into the cloud and from then on it was like being on the inside of a ping pong ball.

At the top you could barely see thirty metres to the souvenir shop and the tourist café. We had a quick look around in the rain, seeing dejected tropical birds in cages around the terrace before sitting in the top station to await the car back down to the bottom.

I caught the 511 bus, which went back to Copacabana by a long, torturous route which meant that I got back too late to catch the film at 14:00 hrs. at the cinema. Thus, I had two hours to kill before the next showing.

I had lunch in McDonalds and some excellent chocolate cake on the corner of Avenida Perú and Avenida Atlantica. Then I went window shopping. I bought a cheap slide film, which was cut from a long reel (bulk film spool) and loaded into a recycled film cassette to fit the camera.

This caused problems as the slide film was put into a print film canister and it was developed accordingly to give me oddly coloured 35mm transparencies as a record of my journey between Rio de Janeiro to Manaus in Amazonas.

I also got some more laundry washing powder and looked in the beachwear shops at the T-shirts and minimal bikinis in colourful displays. On my way back to the cinema I met Lesley, the Australian girl who was with Harry when I last saw her in Cuzco and we caught up on our recent experiences.

I dashed down to the flicks just in time for the start of the programme. There was a bizarre first film which presented black and white slides of bound and violently murdered people with an operatic soundtrack.

The main film was “Saigon”, a good cop partnership movie set in the unusual setting of Vietnam. “Off Limits” is a 1988 action-thriller film set during the Vietnam War starring Willem Dafoe and Gregory Hines and directed by Christopher Crowe. The term "off limits" referred to the area where the original crime took place, an area of Saigon off limits to military personnel. The name of the film was changed to Saigon or Saigon: Off Limits when it was released throughout the rest of the world.

On the way back to the Youth Hostel I bought a red and white striped top for my mum. I went out for a pizza and a couple of beers with Jim and Nikki. She had been valiantly trying to learn Portuguese from Wilson, the hostel doorman and security guard.

After eating Jim came with me on the 127 bus as far as the cake shop on Avenida Perú and then I was on my own on the bus with my baggage, feeling very vulnerable as we passed a particularly dodgy area near the Rodoviário Bus Terminal.

I talked to an English-speaking Brazilian girl while waiting for the bus which left promptly at 23:30 hrs. I slept for most of the night, waking only for the two stops for something to drink.

Lord Jim Pub

Wednesday 25th May 1988

It was a grey morning and before long the rain started again. I bought breakfast in the big supermarket just down the road and loitered in the hostel with the other guests until we were kicked out at 12:00 hrs. noon. I went with José, the Portuguese guy, to a cheap restaurante which was upstairs from a virtually unmarked door on the street.

Here we got a damn good meal for 200 Cruzados. José left on the bus on his way to São Paulo and I went for a walk around the shops on Ribeiro Barata and N. S. Copacabana, taking and interest in those selling photographic film, vinyl records and beachwear. I got a dubious slide film for 1,300 Cruzados.

I went on to browse in an open-fronted record shop where a crowd had gathered watch a Girls of Rio Video. I walked through the sodden fruit and vegetable market, did a couple of pull ups on the deserted beach, bought some laundry soap powder, and then went to the flicks (cinema) to see “Razorback”.

This was a good Australian film released in 1984 and mostly shot in Broken Hill, New South Wales with some excellent photography. Director of photography Dean Semler was hired on the strength of his work in Mad Max 2.

As a vicious wild boar terrorizes the Australian outback, the husband of one of the victims is joined by a hunter and a farmer in a search for the beast. Back at the Youth Hostel I wrote a postcard recommending the film to my friend Austen Simmons, who considered himself something of a film buff.

Jim went off to the Rodoviário Bus Terminal to check out some bus times and I did some research on the way ahead with the South American Handbook 1988. When Jim returned, we walked into Ipanema for a meal at the Kozihna Brasileiro.

We then hurried through the pissing rain to the Lord Jim Pub on Rua Paul Redfern. This was billed as a Bar Inglês. It was a good copy of an English Public House with an old red telephone box outside. Inside there were horse brasses, English signs, a dart board and an English Sunday lunch atmosphere. Pubs in England were only open from 12:00 noon to 14:00 hrs on Sunday lunchtimes so there was some enthusiastic drinking to make the most of the two hours.

It made a change to hear a few English voices, although most were American. It was reputed to be Ronnie Biggs local when he was on the run. Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs was the best-known member of a gang that stole £2.6 million from a Glasgow-to-London mail train in 1963.

Biggs was caught after the robbery and received a 30-year jail sentence but escaped from Wandsworth prison in south London after 15 months and spent 36 years on the run, leading a playboy lifestyle in South America.

He became a familiar figure in the Lord Jim Pub in Ipanema, and around his neighbourhood in Santa Teresa, where he would invite paying guests to hear his stories as a way to make money after the robbery stash ran out.

He is still remembered in Brazil. Newspapers and magazines ran news of his death on the front of their websites yesterday. Veja described the Londoner as “the thief of the 20th century”, while Folha de Sao Paulo ran a photograph of Biggs giving a two-finger salute. Globo carried old newspaper pages reporting the attempts to extradite Biggs from his home in Rio.

We had a few Chopps beers and then took the bus back to Copacabana at 22:00 hrs.

MNBA

Tuesday 24th May 1988

I awoke to a dull, dreary rainy morning. Most people staying at the Youth Hostel loitered about despondently until the midday deadline forced them out onto the streets in the gloom. Hostellers had to vacate the hostel for each afternoon.

I went into the city centre with the Portuguese guy who was wearing an Xmal Deutschland T-shirt. Xmal Deutschland, often written as X-Mal Deutschland, was a musical group from Hamburg, West Germany, which existed from 1980 to 1990. Founded in 1980 with a completely female line-up, they became chart hit makers both within, and outside, their native country. The lead singer of the band was vocalist Anja Huwe. Xmal Deutschland's last album was released in 1989.

We went to the Portuguese Airline Office where he was dismayed to find that all the flights back to Portugal were fully booked until July. He made a provisional booking on his open ticket and we went for a walking tour of the city centre. The rain-washed streets were packed with people.

We looked around The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (MNBA; Portuguese for National Museum of Fine Arts) which is a national art museum. The museum, officially established in 1937 by the initiative of education minister Gustavo Capanema, was inaugurated in 1938 by President Getúlio Vargas.

The museum collection, on the other hand, takes its rise in the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in the early 19th century, when King John VI brought along with him part of the Portuguese Royal Collection. This art collection stayed in Brazil after the King's return to Europe and became the core collection of the National School of Fine Arts. When the museum was created in 1937, it became the heir not only the National School collection, but also of its headquarters, a 1908 eclectic style building projected by Spanish architect Adolfo Morales de los Ríos.

The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes is one of the most important cultural institutions of the country, as well as the most important museum of Brazilian art, particularly rich in 19th-century paintings and sculptures.

The collection includes more than 20,000 pieces, among paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, of Brazilian and international artists, ranging from High Middle Ages to contemporary art. It also includes smaller assemblages of decorative arts, folk and African art. The museum library has a collection of about 19,000 titles. The building was listed as Brazilian national heritage in 1973.

We were intrigued by the varied selection of old and modern paintings and then went out to browse along the extensive magazine stalls, sneakily reading the English music papers, New Musical Express (NME), Sounds and Melody Maker which were too expensive for us to buy.

We went on to the Rodoviária do Rio Bus Station which was inaugurated in 1965 and is the second biggest one in South America. I bought a ticket to Ouro Preto for 1,200 Cruzados for Thursday night at 23:30 hrs.

Ouro Preto (Black Gold), formerly Vila Rica (Rich Town), is a city in and former capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a former colonial mining town located in the Serra do Espinhaço mountains and designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO because of its outstanding Baroque Portuguese colonial architecture.

Ouro Preto is located in one of the main areas of the Brazilian Gold Rush that started in the 1690’s. Officially, 800 tons of gold were sent to Portugal in the eighteenth century, not to mention what was circulated in an illegal manner, nor what remained in the colony, such as gold used in the ornamentation of the churches.

The Sugar Loaf was shrouded in cloud and the rain got heavier as we thundered back to Copacabana on the kamikaze bus. We ran, as best we could in flip-flops through the downpour back to the Youth Hostel, picking up a whole cooked roast chicken and a bottle of wine en route.

Wilson, the hostel doorman turned a blind eye to our consumption of alcohol on the premises but told us to hide it from the girls on the reception desk. In the dormitory we lounged around as the rain became torrential outside the window. Swirling brown rivers hurtled down the gutters of the steep cobbled lane outside the Youth Hostel. I started to read “Carnival of Spies” by Robert Moss, published in 1987.

The review in Publishers Weekly said: Perceiving how cruelly workers are treated in the early years of the 20th century, poor Hamburg boy Johnny Lentz idealistically turns to communism. Trained in Moscow as an expert in promoting revolution, he is dispatched throughout Europe, then to China and later to Brazil to help local organizers.

The purge of his best friend, however, leads him to realize that Soviet leader Stalin has become improbably enamoured of and secretly helpful to Hitler, a man who should be the Soviet Union's enemy. Disillusioned, Johnny becomes a double agent for England and must choose between the love of two sisters who may betray him if his collaboration is revealed.

Robert Moss (Moscow Rules) has done excellent research, using such historical incidents as a little-known communist uprising in Brazil during the '30s to great effect, and his gritty descriptions offer vivid glimpses of different cultures. Although the characters lack depth and Moss relies too often on formulaic thriller devices and dialogue, the novel is nonetheless an absorbing read.

The rain didn’t look like it was going to stop so Jim and I nipped down to our usual nearby stand-up restaurant for lasagne. Afterwards we walked around for a bit in search of a good cake shop and then returned to the Youth Hostel as all was quiet, wet and miserable in the town.

I had a long hot shower and then read some more of my book before going to sleep early at 22:30 hrs.

Corcovado

Monday 23rd May 1988

I awoke quite early thanks to the dreadful din from the building site opposite and got up to write some letters and postcards in the common room. At 10:30 hrs. I went out with Jim to the Post Office and then we did a survey of the cambios in order to change up some travellers cheques.

The “official rate” in American Express was 155 Cruzados to the $US dollar but we got 200 Cruzados at the Diamond Jewellers at Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana 387-B. I bought another expensive slide film for my camera for 2,400 Cruzados on the way back to the Youth Hostel.

I got my camera and we headed for the Corcovado, the prominent hill with the statue of Christ the Redeemer on the top. Bus 583 from Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana hurtled through the suburbs, narrowly missing vehicles and pedestrians alike, using a maximum of braking and acceleration to keep us passengers off balance.

We arrived at the bottom of the hill and paid 500 Cruzados for a return train trip to the summit. The red, subway-like train hauled us up the steep track to a superb panoramic view of Rio de Janeiro threading between the lakes and hills below. The big Jockey Club Racetrack was particularly noticeable.

The Corcovado Rack Railway (Portuguese: Trem do Corcovado) is a mountain rack railway which runs from Cosme Velho to the summit of Corcovado at an elevation of 710 m (2,329 ft). The railway was opened by Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil on 9th October 1884. Initially hauled by steam locomotives, the line was electrified in 1910, a first in Brazil. It was re-equipped in 1980 with trains built by Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works (SLM) of Winterthur, Switzerland.

The line is 3.824 kilometres (2.376 miles) long and has four stations total. There are three trains, each made of two cars. The trip takes approximately 20 minutes and departs every 20 minutes, giving a capacity of 540 passengers per hour.

We matched up the view with our map. All around us tourists were busy with their cameras and video recording cameras around the huge statue with the outstretched arms in spite of the grey cloudy sky.

We went back down on the train and took a bus back to Copacobana, following a long circuitous route through the Jardim Botanico, Leblon and Ipanema. We browsed through the numerous book and magazine shops on the walk back to the Youth Hostel from the bus stop.

It was getting dark and the long-threatened rain had just started to fall. Everybody in the dormitory sat about on their beds reading while a stiff breeze lashed the palm tree outside the window. A Portuguese bloke arrived and began swigging from a bottle of sherry.

He was going to see the English rock band “Gene loves Jezebel” and I decided to join him. The concert was on in a big cabaret hall just the other side of the tunnel that linked Copacabana to Botafogo.

A young crowd gathered in the venue drinking Chopp beer from plastic cups. There were a few token ripped jeans in evidence, but the majority were pretty clean cut kids. Billed here as the top band from the UK, Gene Loves Jezebel are a British rock band formed in the early 1980s by identical twin brothers Jay (born John) and Michael Aston. The name of the band is a reference to rock musician Gene Vincent and his song "Jezebel".

Gene Loves Jezebel's best-known songs include "Heartache", "Desire (Come and Get It)" (1986), "The Motion of Love" (1987), "Jealous" (1990) and "Break the Chain" (1993), as well as alternative club hits "Bruises" (1983), "Influenza (Relapse)" (1984) and "The Cow" (1985). "The Motion of Love" was the band's most successful UK single. The band were an enjoyable glam rock outfit with long hair and camp poses.

We looked for a lively place for final drink in Copacabana before going back to bed, but it was pretty dead. We settled for a McDonalds instead and demolished a huge avocado in the common room before turning in at 01:00 hrs.

Ipanema

Above: Ipanema Beach on a gloomy May day. Sunday 22nd May 1988

After a long lie-in I walked with Jim towards Ipanema along the waters edge. The white sand was lost beneath bronzed people engaged in beach activities. Jim had forgotten his security locker key and went back to the hostel to get it while I waited on the front and watched the crowd go by.

Sexy girls, happy children, people young and old cheerful at the prospect of a lazy sunny Sunday on the beach. Jim returned and we walked into Ipanema which is a neighbourhood located in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro, between Leblon and Arpoador.

The beach at Ipanema became known internationally with the popularity of the bossa nova jazz song, "The Girl from Ipanema" ("Garota de Ipanema"), written by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes.

We browsed amongst the arts and crafts of the “hippy fair” at Praça General Osório. Paintings, batiks, leather goods and ceramics were on display for sale. We found a restaurant at the corner of the praça at Cozinha Brasileira on the Rua Visconde de Pirajá where we got a huge meal consisting of rice, chicken, spaghetti, potatoes and vegetables for 350 Cruzados. After a strawberry juice next door, we went down to Ipanema Beach.

We met a guy from Finland that Jim knew, and he watched our gear while we went swimming in the violent sea. The Atlantic Ocean here had a savage undertow. Thieves were everywhere in Rio and unguarded gear left on the beach tended to disappear almost immediately. The Fin had his trousers stolen on Copacabana Beach yesterday, while he was reading a book.

It was like a film set or a tourist brochure with sun, sea, sand and pretty women in bikinis everywhere. The song "The Girl from Ipanema" played in my head. After a while we walked inland to see the big Lagoa (lake). Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon (Portuguese: Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas) is a lagoon in the district of Lagoa in the Zona Sul (South Zone) area of Rio de Janeiro.

The lagoon is connected to the Atlantic Ocean, allowing sea water to enter by a canal along the edge of a park locally known as Jardim de Alah. The lagoon was surrounded by lakeside hotels. We walked back to Copacabana where I bought a vest for the hot weather to come and swam in the gentler surf of Copacabana beach.

At 16:30 hrs. we went back to the Youth Hostel for a shower. Down-and-outs (homeless) sat in doorways and outside the church. “If you have to live in somebody’s doorway, I guess Copacabana is a good place to do it”, said Jim. Most of the people living on the streets looked very fit and affluent despite their lack of clothing and possessions.

After a shower and a change of T-shirt I went out to get something to eat with Jim. We finally settled for a meal of chicken and lasagne at a stand-up corner bar. Afterwards we walked along the front towards the Sugar Loaf Mountain, stopping to drink coconut juice from green coconuts which the short-changing youth at the kiosk dangerously hacked open with a meat cleaver.

Joggers and lovers monopolised the seafront promenade on our return. We had some chocolate cake and had a beer. Drunks and vagrants slept on the sidewalks as the affluent headed for the night clubs in their sequined outfits.

Back at the hostel the security doorman verified our identity through a hatch in the door before letting us in. This was a sign that Rio could be a dangerous place as well as a playground.

Copacabana

Saturday 21st May 1988

I got a local bus to the city centre and checked the Poste Restante in the huge old Post Office, but there was nothing for me. A subsequent walk about revealed that it was not a good time to visit the city centre. Most of the shops were shut and the Modern Art Museum and the National History Museum were closed for renovation, and the Image & Sound Museum was closed because it was Saturday.

I had brunch in McDonalds again! Bought some postcards and wrote them in the pleasant Campo de Santana Park which is a park located in the Praça da República in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The name of the plaza refers to the fact that it is located near the site where the Brazil was declared a Republic in 1889.

During the colonial period in Brazil, the area currently occupied by the park was an enormous swamp. Over time, the swamp was filled in and used as a public space. The region became known as "Campo da Cidade"/"Campo de São Domingos" and served as a divider between downtown Rio de Janeiro and the rural areas surrounding it.

In 1753, it became known as "Campo de Santana". This name originated with a church that was constructed in the region that developed a large number of devotees. The church was demolished in 1854 to make way for the first urban railroad station in Brazil, the Dom Pedro II Station. Later, on the site of this first station, the city's Central Station was built.

Agoutis which are animals like rabbits with rat-like heads and long legs scampered amongst the trees. A mad woman sat shouting on a bench by the river and the locals strolled in the shade, chatting.

After a bit of a hunt, I found a bus stop and caught a bus back to Copacabana, regarding everyone on the bus with suspicion as an Australian traveller was robbed at knifepoint on a crowded bus a couple of days ago. I had left my valuables and passport in the safe at the Youth Hostel and only went out with a few dollars cash in my pocket while I stayed in Rio de Janeiro.

Back in the Youth Hostel common room I met Jim, an American, and Nicki who was English, and we went out for a meal together. We had lasagne and several drinks at a popular restaurant nearby. Afterwards Jim and I walked along the seafront promenade, pausing to try our hand at pull-ups and dips at the beach gyms. We had another couple of beers on the way back to the Youth Hostel.